SDIRC INCREASES ACCESS AND SCORES ON AP AND IB COURSES AND EXAMS

Vero Beach, FL, July 31, 2018– The College Board and The International Baccalaureate recently released reports indicating that the students in Indian River County have outperformed both state and global averages in Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) exams. Not only did our student scores increase, but participation in AP and IB classes, by all demographics, increased tremendously.

Access to the rigorous coursework that AP and IB classes offer has increased over 8 percentage points, with the total number of high school students enrolled in AP and IB courses in 2016-2017 at 20.61% and in 2017-2018 at 29%.

Superintendent Mark Rendell stated, “Objective 1.2 of our Strategic Plan is to ensure that all of our students receive high quality instruction and rigorous coursework. We have greatly increased access to accelerated programs, such as Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. Almost 1/3 of our students are taking at least one AP or IB course. What is more impressive is that even with a larger number of students taking these challenging courses, we have maintained a high level of performance. We are so proud of the students and the teachers for their hard work.”

Participation by our Black, Hispanic, and White students in 2017-2018 has increased from the previous year, showing our largest increase in participation among our Black students.

AP and IB Participation by Demographic

2016-2017

2017-2018

Black Students

7.74%

21%

Hispanic Students

14.6%

23.6%

White Students

26.5%

34.2%

International Baccalaureate Highlights (IB)

76% of the IB Diploma seniors earned the IB Diploma, an increase from 68% in 2016-17.

For the third year in a row, our district increased the number of seniors taking English Literature HL. Furthermore, 100% of these seniors passed this rigorous, 4-part external and internal assessment!

Increased total number of students taking exams by 24% (from 118 in 2017 to 146 students in 2018).

The following subjects exceeded the global average score:

English Literature HL

Spanish B SL

History of the Americas HL

Mathematics SL

Advanced Placement Highlights (AP):

Enrollment in the Environmental Science course at VBHS more than doubled, while maintaining a 62% pass rate, and mean score of 3.11, exceeding both the global score of a 48% pass rate with a 2.63 mean score, and state score of a 41% pass rate, with a 2.42 mean score.

Enrollment in Biology at VBHS almost doubled from 55 to 95 students, and the pass rate increased from 51% to 61%.